Closely watched since the early 2000s, Chen Ke has made a career as a painter whose work evokes a social sensibility even as it speaks to the specific dreams and predicaments of individuals. Her early work often depicted cartoonish young girls, ambivalent avatars for the artist and her generation, raised in an ever-expanding consumer economy. In 2020, she debuted the “Bauhaus Gal” series, filtering images of women from the photographic archives of the renowned German school and movement through her own feelings and memories. For this exhibition she presents the most recent iteration of this ongoing project, including nearly twenty canvases which imagine and envision the female heroes of this bygone utopian moment. The poignancy of these works is heightened by the context of UCCA and Factory 798, spaces originally designed in the 1950s by a state institute in Dessau, the East German city that was home to the Bauhaus’s final iteration. Chen Ke deepens this connection with the inclusion of archival materials and site-specific elements. The exhibition is curated by UCCA Director Philip Tinari.

About the Artist

Chen Ke (b. 1978, Sichuan; lives and works in Beijing) obtained her BA from the Oil Painting Department of Sichuan Academy of Fine Arts in 2002 and an MFA in 2005 from the same faculty. Her previous solo exhibitions include “Bauhaus Gal—Theatre” (Perrotin Gallery, Paris, 2023); “The Unknown Woman Artist” (C5CNM, Beijing, 2020); “The Real Deal Is Talking with Dad” (Yuz Museum, Shanghai, 2018-2019); “Dream · Dew” (Perrotin Gallery, Hong Kong, 2016); and “Cover: Recent Works by Chen Ke” (Star Gallery, Beijing, 2015).

Select group exhibitions include “One and All: New Artistic Styles of Contemporary Painting” (National Art Museum of China, Beijing, 2024); “Portraits — The Tenth Anniversary of the Long Museum” (Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai, 2023); “Chinese Contemporary Art from the Yuz Foundation” (Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, 2021); “Reading the Raindrops—The Western China Artists Documenta” (MoCA Yinchuan,Yinchuan, 2017); and “Chinese Whispers: Recent Art from the Sigg & M+ Sigg Collections” (Kunstmuseum Bern, Switzerland, 2016). Her works are in many collections including Museum Voorlinden, Netherlands; The Sigg Collection, Switzerland; The Franks-Suss Collection, United Kingdom; BSI Art Foundation, Switzerland; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; and Long Museum, Shanghai.